


Taenia Memoriae

by jonbsims, Nonlegitatall



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, jon (?) and michael bond over identity issues, martin is dead (?), tags will be updated as things are revealed, things are unhappy now but get better, tim is angry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 02:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18273851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonbsims/pseuds/jonbsims, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonlegitatall/pseuds/Nonlegitatall
Summary: Tim and Daisy are still alive and well.  Elias is still running the Institute.  Michael is still running around, for whatever that's worth.  Everyone is safe...except for him.Still, things are more complicated than everyone seems to think.





	Taenia Memoriae

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Conturbatio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16139528) by [Nonlegitatall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonlegitatall/pseuds/Nonlegitatall). 



> do try to read the fic that comes before this one, conturbatio! it'll make more sense that way.

It is very alarming, to suddenly be so very awake and afraid.

It only registers to him after several seconds that he’s screaming, a ragged, hoarse noise that rather sounds like a dying animal. Realizing this, he stops abruptly, throwing himself into a coughing fit. Hunched over, he put his hand over his mouth.

He feels something wet and solid come out.

Horrified, he looks at the dark chunk on his shaking hand, only to see something more awful and terrifying than the blood. He can feel himself start to panic, but before it can take over him, he hears the door open.

“Ah, I see you’re awake, finally. How do you feel?”

“Elias, I… What… I-”

He stops talking, his own voice unfamiliar. Suddenly remembering what’s on his hand, he yelps and flails, the piece of meat landing on the floor next to the table he’s apparently sitting on. Elias looks only mildly perturbed by this.

“What do you remember?” Elias asks.

“I… Um, I was in bed, and then there was Nikola and… Oh. The...skin. And,” he takes a moment to take a deep breath. “How did I get to the Institute? Did we stop the unknowing? Is… Is Martin…?”

Elias sighs, and he feels rather like a lost, embarrassed child.

“I’ll give you some time to work out what’s happened. Your desk is as you left it. I’ll be in my office, if you need me, Jon.”

And just like that, the man is gone, and Jon is left alone.

He looks around. It’s a small room, one he hasn’t seen before - there is a skylight that filters soft, warm sunlight onto his...onto Martin’s broken body, which had apparently been laid across a table. There is a blanket on the ground, next to the….chunk. He assumes it had been thrown off him when he awoke, rather violently. There are bookshelves lining every wall except for where Elias came from.

More disturbingly, there are white chalk drawings of eyes on every available surface. Looking at them now, they feel like they’re watching him. Like they’ve been watching him.

Feeling too uneasy to stay still, he gets up, slowly, putting his feet on the ground one by one. Letting go of the table, he stumbles and falls, hitting the hardwood floor with a thud. The apparent lack of pain upon impact is alarming, but not necessarily surprising. He pulls himself up again, this time more carefully, keeping himself close to the ground. He exits the room, step by step.

It takes several minutes of shakily wandering the halls of the Institute to orient himself, and when he does, he finds the nearest bathroom and throws up.

What comes up out of his hollow throat is more meat, and a black ichor that drips down his face and stains the toilet. He does his best not to think about where exactly it’s coming from, but fails, and instead flushes it down. Splashing his face does little to alleviate his anxiety, but it does get him to look at the mirror long enough for for exactly what is happening to settle in.

When Jon looks at his reflection, he sees Martin. He sees Martin, but so, so very wrong. The dark skin covered in round scars and scuffs, the curly black hair, the big doll-like eyes that stare back at him.

The ball joints that are barely covered by his grey t-shirt.

Unable to look at the sight any longer, he turns away, leaning against the dirty sink. The cool contact of the mirror nearly doesn’t register, the sense far too dulled.

He considers staying there for a while, perhaps for the rest of the day so he could sneak out without anyone seeing him, as coming out earlier means the possibility of someone other than Elias seeing him, and he does not particularly want to find out how any of the other employees might react to his new form. Nonetheless, he steels himself, and shoves himself out the door.

His walk back to the Archives is uneventful, and he doesn’t see anyone else until after he’s reached his old office. Just like he left it, like Elias said - there’s even an empty, nondescript mug on the desk, right next to the half organized papers. The ache in his heart overwhelms him so much that he doesn’t notice the figure behind him.

“Martin?”

Jon whips around to see Tim. Of course, he still looks like Martin, just… Very, very different.

Tim looks like he is about to retch, just from looking at his face, but instead of turning away or running to the nearest rubbish bin, he brandishes a pained smile.

“Elias was right. You look like shit, buddy.”

“Thanks.”

There is a beat of silence, and then Tim is moving towards him. He flinches, going into a defensive posture, but then there are arms around him, tight and warm, his assistant’s face buried in his neck. His stomach sinks - this is supposed to be private, a personal moment, never meant for him. His words fail, though, so he instead gently reciprocates the hug.

“Thank you,” Tim says hoarsely. “Thank you. For… Thanks, for killing those sons of _bitches_.”

Jon considers his next words very carefully.

He settles for a simple “You’re welcome.”

The embrace lasts for several seconds before Tim pulls away, looking bashfully at anywhere other than at Jon’s face. Martin’s face. A rather sick combination of both.

“Well, guess I’ll…see you around? I hope?” Tim shuffles on his feet.

“Sure,” Jon replies. He doesn’t know what else to say.

And then Tim is walking out, and Jon is quickly running out of time to say the words he needs to say. When any words come to him, his assistant is already out of sight. The guilt is already clawing at his throat, and it is far too much.

He turns to his old desk. Just as he left it. Assumedly, this means he still has his job.

Even if he doesn’t, he could sure use the distraction about now.

He sits down into the familiar seat from a very unfamiliar perspective. Even so, it’s comfortable, and a sort of strange warmth envelops him as he leafs through his papers. He remembers this. He knows this. He can do this.

He grabs the nearest tape recorder and clicks record.

All at once, the soft blanket of the Beholding’s grip is torn away, replaced by an intense burning that makes him yelp, dropping the recorder out of instinct. Even so, the pain spreads over his body like a fire that makes his vision go out. By the time his lucidity returns to him, he is apparently hunched over his desk, papers on the floor, his hand twitching.

“Maybe I should make some tea instead,” he says to no one in particular, and cringes when his voice reminds him exactly whose body he’s in.

He remembers that he can no longer drink tea.

 _Maybe trying to go back to work right away is a bad idea_ , he thinks, so he gathers the papers up and puts them in a neat little stack, and heads to the Institute lobby.

His home, like his desk, is unchanged. 

Unlike his desk, the fact that his house hasn't been touched fills him with a sense of dread. This is where he and Martin were dragged from, that night. The signs of Nikola’s invasion Jon had been expecting to see are thankfully absent, but reminders of Martin are scattered about everywhere. 

He slowly walks through the house, taking in the condition it’s in, doing his best to avoid entering the bed room. But he can only search every nook and cranny so many times before it becomes clear to him that he can no longer avoid it.

His room is surprisingly tidy for having been broken into. The blanket from the bed is still left piled on the floor from where it must have fallen when Nikola dragged Martin from the bed. Jon recoils at the thought. He picks up the blanket and lays it neatly over the bed bed again. 

He stands there, looking at the blanket, feeling numb. His mind is full of racing thoughts which blend together into an incoherent mess. He lets his gaze slowly drift around the room, trying to understand. His eyes land on the gloves he bought for Martin. They're laying on the side table on Martin's side of the bed. He stares at them for a while before picking them up.

Picking them up and feeling the soft leather beneath his hands breaks a dam inside him. The full realization that he will never speak to Martin again or hear his gentle chiding and fussing hits him like a ton of bricks. He slowly curls in on himself clutchung the gloves to his chest. His body shakes with dry sobs, his form still unable to produce any tears.

He doesn't understand it anymore. Why did he survive when Martin didn't? Why is he expected to go on like he's not changed and ruined by what Nikola did? He feels too many questions bubble up in his mind at once, as wave after wave of anger and sadness passes over him.

He lays there for what feels like forever until he seems to have worn himself out again as passed into the mild numbness he's been feeling since he woke up. He slips the gloves onto his hands almost without thinking. _There, now I feel more human_ , a part of him says quietly.

He blinks in surprise before chuckling. A cruel reminder of whose body he resides in now. And yet, it feels right. The gloves do make him feel less monstrous and a bit calmer.

_I guess it's just that wearing these reminds me of Martin and I’ve been thinking about him so much, so of course I'd associate memories of him with comfort and safety._

He doesn't remove the gloves. 

He picks himself up off the floor and looks around again. He doesn't know what to do with himself. He thinks he should eat, but then remembers that he can't, and the memories of what he coughed up that morning still plague his mind - he’s not sure he could eat, even if he were capable of the action.

 _What was that? And why was it there?_ He knew what it could be, but thought makes him nauseous. Besides, Martin hadn't coughed up anything like that, so why was he? _Did Nikola put them there? She did talk about using all the pieces…_ He feels like he should be throwing up again, but he can't find the energy to even make the necessary movement. He wanders over to the dresser, his head feels like it's been stuffed with static as he quietly puts in the pajamas he has gotten for Martin and slips into bed.

He wakes up, expecting to see - he doesn’t know. Martin. Breakfast in bed. Rainbows and butterflies.

There are none of those things.

It takes several minutes to fully wake up, to remember who he is and what his life has been - he suddenly misses the cold, stark fear, the panic. It left no room for thought. Without Elias or Tim there as a distraction, he simply sits up and curls up in on himself and weeps. The sobs rack his plastic so violently that his skin scrapes against his joints, only making him cry harder.

When he’s able to calm himself enough to slow his sobbing to gentle sniffling, it feels like it’s been hours. Even so, looking at the clock informs him that it’s only been about fifteen minutes since he first awoke.

Still hours before he should be at the Institute.

He briefly considers cleaning up a bit, getting rid of the clutter, but he he winces at the thought. Not yet. It isn’t that much of a mess, anyway. So instead he gets as many clothes as he can fit over his form, pulls them on, and leaves his apartment. 

He walks. He holds his gloved fists close to him the entire way.

Luckily, it’s early enough that the streets aren’t very populated. Despite being much taller, and much larger than most people now, he manages to avoid getting any weird looks - at least, not any that he catches while hiding his face, minimizing his form as much as is possible.

By the time he reaches the front steps of the Institute, though, the sun is bright and the streets are becoming more crowded. Before anyone notices him, he hurries into the building and shuffles past Rosie before she can even say anything.

Tucking himself into his desk is a relief.

He sits back, breathing out a long sigh as he considers what to do next. He should try to record a statement, though if there’s still any of the Stranger’s hold over him, he isn’t sure he’s quite ready to work through that pain, as yesterday showed him. 

The other option is doing research, but that requires him speaking to at least one of his assistants, and the thought makes him shudder - particularly at the thought of having to talk to Tim. He will have to explain at some point, that is for sure, and the longer he goes without telling him the worse -

“Hello… Jon.”

Jon jumps, knocking over a stack of papers in his surprise.

“Elias! You, um, frightened… What do you want?”

Elias smiles at him in a way that looks more like sneering, but he doesn’t comment on it.

“Just surprised to see you here, is all. I would have expected you to take a few days off, to recuperate.”

“I _do_ still have my job, don’t I?”

“Of course. Assuming you can still perform all your duties, that is.”

That shuts Jon up. He just looks away, gripping the table so hard he fears it may crack. It does not. He tries his best not to think about what Elias does with Archivists that can no longer do their jobs.

“Well,” Elias continues, “I’ll let you get on with it, then. Good luck, Jon.”

And with that, he’s left alone in the Archives, a deep sense of dread filling his gut. He realizes with a start that he’s sitting at Martin’s desk.

When he gets up, he thinks about going to his own office, but decides against it - still, he needs to do _something_ while he’s at the Institute, to feel like he’s not just here to avoid being at his apartment. Without thinking, he starts walking, and before he knows it, he’s making tea.

He stares at the teapot as on the stove slowly boils. He glares when it doesn’t give him the answers he wants. Nonetheless, he grabs a bunch of cups from the cupboards, pours the tea and puts the whole set on a tray.

Carrying it out of the small kitchen and to the rest of the Archives, he starts to regret the decision - but when he reaches the offices, it seems Tim and the others are in the other room.

He can hear them laughing. He doesn’t want to know what about.

He settles for placing four of the cups of hot tea on one of the tables for them to find later. He turns around, not noticing the person entering the room.

“Martin.”

He turns to look behind him, tempted to flee faster, but choosing not to.

“You made us tea,” Tim states. “Seems like some things never change.”

Jon smiles painfully.

“I suppose so,” he replies.

He takes the moment of awkward silence that follows as a chance to escape, nearly spilling the remaining tea he has. Setting it down on his desk, he flops down, burying his face in a pile of papers.

Once he no longer feels like his anxiety is going to scratch and crawl its way out of his throat, he sits back up, only to be greeted by the pot of tea and the two remaining teacups. 

One for Martin.

One for Jon.

He sighs, cradling his head in his hands. Looking to the side, he notices a pale yellow door.

He stands up, slowly, picking up the tray as he goes. _This isn’t my worst idea_ , he thinks dryly, and he almost opens the door with his one free hand, but settles for knocking before standing back. He has to force himself not to run when the door creaks open to a familiar face.

“Hello… Archivist?”

“Hello, Michael.”

Michael laughs, and his body contorts into impossible spirals.

“I thought one of your kind would be more cautious about knocking on unfamiliar doors.”

Jon flinches, but does his best to disguise it as a shrug.

“I made some tea. I can’t drink it. I thought it would be a waste to just throw it away. Do you want some?”

Michael stares at him, squinting, clearly unimpressed.

“If you’re not interested, I can always go find some other vaguely benevolent monster to share it with.”

In retaliation, Michael snatches the tray from his hands. Jon winces when the hot tea splashes out, falling onto the floor, and then watches in horror as the creature unhinges his jaw, sliding the entire arrangement into his throat. 

Jon tries not to look too disgusted at the crunching noises as Michael devours even the tray itself, seemingly finding no problem with what he’s doing.

“That was my favorite teacup,” he says, even though it’s not true.

“Perhaps I’ll make you another one. Say, Archivist, rumors say you stopped one of the ‘rituals’... The Unknowing, hmm? The dance.”

Jon huffs, and goes to sit back at his desk. Michael follows, ominously hovering.

“One could say that’s what happened,” he says bitterly.

“Who are you?”

Jon blinks, looking back up at Michael, whose entire being is still buzzing faintly.

“My name is Jonathan Sims, I’m the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute,” he recites.

“No, no. Who are _you_?”

“That _is_ who I am,” Jon says, becoming slightly frustrated.

In a turn of events, Michael sits on his desk before he can grab a file from the pile of the documents in a passive aggressive message of ‘I’m done with this conversation’. Instead, his vision is clouded by the creature’s midsection and dizzying visions of fractals.

“Is there something else you want?”

“You’re very rude, Archivist, inviting me in and then ignoring me. Is this how you treat all your guests?”

Jon groans.

“Would you like me to throw you a party? We have more teacups you could eat,” he says, and immediately regrets it.

“You should join us. The fractals would like you, I think.”

“I like my job at the Archives, thank you for the offer though.”

“Do you?” Michael smiles with a twinkle in his eyes. “I’ll take your word for it. Still, the ‘offer’ will always be there.”

Michael slides off the desk, slinking back over to his door, casually throwing papers to the ground as he goes. He looks back at Jon.

“I’ll see you around, ‘Jon’.” He pauses. “Maybe I’ll even give a statement next time. When you’re feeling more up to it, of course.”

Jon lets out a breath of relief when he hears the door close.

Looking again, it almost seems that there’s no sign of the door having ever been there in the first place. He knows that if he looks closer he will see the slight warp in reality, in the wall, that Michael left, leaves everywhere he goes.

He thinks about how much a new tea set will cost and sighs. At least he doesn’t have to buy a full one, he thinks optimistically.

He grabs the nearest document and starts reading it.

By the time it’s dark, and by the time it’s far after Institute hours, he’s read an entire messy desk’s worth of documents. A decent amount of research, he thinks, without actually going out onto the field himself anyway. He looks nervously at the tape recorder. He nearly grabs it, but the phantom pain reminds him of how bad of an idea that would be.

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” he promises, to himself or to Elias he doesn’t know, and stands up.

This time, he takes the bus back. Something about the thought of being out in the open makes him feel queasy. It’s late enough that if any of the other passengers gave him weird looks, they would most likely be hypocrites. 

He finds enough energy in himself to be scared as he walks up to his apartment, and resolves to buy a deadlock for his door the next day - more clothes, too. Still, as he walks inside, the exhaustion begins to set in. He looks sadly at the still unchanged apartment, traces of Martin still lingering everywhere he looks.

It’s all he can do to not begin another fit of sobbing to tuck himself into his bed, curling into himself as tightly as possible, drifting into a still dreamless sleep.

When he wakes up, and finishes his new morning routine of screaming in the space between dreams and wakefulness and crying when he’s fully awake, he wearily pulls himself out of bed and begins cleaning. He puts the old takeout with the rubbish, the old papers too, takes all of Martin’s belongings and, not without a good deal of guilt, stuffs them into the back of the closet for him to deal with at a later date.

He doesn’t walk this morning, because he doesn’t want to be late for work, but it’s hard to miss the way people look at him when they think he isn’t looking.

This time, when he gets to the Institute, he goes straight to his office and tries to record a statement.

He fails, miserably, of course. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s blacked out for, this time, but when he regains the majority of his consciousness - it’s still a bit fuzzy at the edges, if he’s being honest - he takes a deep breath before resigning himself to making more tea.

This becomes his routine. He ignores the judging gaze of the passengers on the bus, tries to do his work, fails, makes more tea. He scurries out of the rooms before anyone can confront him. He pointedly ignores new doors in the Institute, especially when he still has a tray of tea, one set is enough to pay for, thank you very much. He either stays until two in the morning or gets out early, goes and runs errands - gets new clothes, takes stuff to the dump. Walks in the park. Sits in his apartment and thinks about what he could have done differently. Rinse and repeat.

He has almost adjusted to his new predicament - or so he tells himself - when he comes in one morning, only to be greeted by Tim’s intense stare in the lobby, blocking his path.

“Oh, um… Hello, Tim.”

Tim raises an eyebrow at him.

“Is there something you want?” he asks, becoming antsy.

“For you to actually talk to me, maybe.”

Jon averts his gaze.

“Look, I’ve - I’ve been pretty busy. With… With the Archives, and such.”

“Yeah. Apparently, Elias promoted you to Head Archivist. Which you didn’t tell me, of course.”

He sighs.

“Look,” Tim continues, “I know that things have been - difficult. I have no idea what you must be going through, I mean… It must be terrible.”

Tim is closer now, and Jon’s chest feels tight as a gentle hand is placed upon his shoulder.

“Tim…”

“No, look. You’ve been doing everything you can to never see me, and I think I deserve to know why. Things are hard, but we can work it out together, if you’d just _talk_ to me, Martin -”

“I’m not Martin.”

The words slip out without him thinking about it. He feels like the temperature has dropped several degrees. Tim stares at him in disbelief.

“What… What do you mean?”

“I mean what I said. I’m… Jonathan. The Archivist.”

Tim laughs, starkly.

“That’s - if this is a joke, it’s not very funny. C’mon, Martin, let’s just forget the whole thing and -”

“I’m not...joking. I wish I were. Martin is gone. I don’t know why. I… I’m sorry, Tim, I meant to tell you sooner, but I…”

Tim is staring blankly, at nothing, at anything but the corpse of his former friend and colleague. If Jon looks closely, he can see that his assistant is shaking, from anger or sadness he cannot tell, but he reaches out in concern either way. His hand is quickly slapped away.

“Tim,” he says.

“Shut up. You don’t get to - you don’t get to look at me, all concerned and soft and - while wearing _his_ face. You don’t get to say _anything_.”

Jon frowns when Tim laughs, a dark thing, holding his face in his hands as he does so.

“Of course. Of course when I thought things were getting slightly better - or just, some aspect of _pleasant_ , this sort of shit has to happen. Poor old Timmy can’t get a break, now can he? No, no. I’m not dealing with your shit, Jon.”

He feels helpless, unsure of himself, of what to do, and incredibly scared, as Tim glares at him.

“Don’t. Talk to me again,” Tim says. “And don’t keep making tea, either,” he adds as an afterthought before storming off.

When Jon finally reaches his office, he cries so hard he throws up. There’s a gentle ‘plop’ as the black liquid falls onto the papers in the rubbish bin. He has no time to think about it before he’s overtaken by more sobs, sobs that wrack his entire body until he’s feels a pain in his abdomen that he would have thought wasn’t possible if it weren’t for the fact that it makes him hunch over himself from the sheer intensity as it courses through him. It feels like hours, days, before he’s able to calm himself down, though a look at the clock tells him it’s only been minutes.

He sits there for a while, just gently breathing - as useless as it is - watching the seconds pass by, listening to the gentle ticking, laying his head on the hard, cold wood of his desk.

He grabs a tape recorder.

“Statement of… Jonathan Sims. Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Recording...also by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Statement taken direct from subject, February 24th, 2018. Statement begins.”

He starts at the very beginning, his being promoted, shocked at the lack of hot pain taking over his body.

He talks about Elias. He talks about Martin. Jane Prentiss, the worms, the entities - he talks about Nikola Orsinov. His time in The Stranger’s custody. About being traded for his assistant. About finding the remains of him afterwards.

He talks about the pain, the love he felt, the panic as the date of the Unknowing drew closer and closer.

He talks about being skinned alive.

Finally, he talks about stopping the Unknowing with Martin. Escaping. Dying, fading away. By the time he clicks the recorder off, he’s wheezing, exhausted and on the verge of falling asleep.

He barely notices Elias entering the room.

“Good job, Jon. Glad to have you back,” is the last thing he hears before fading into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> im trying to be a bit more mysterious about the direction of this one. though if you ever talk to my you'll learn that im not very good at keeping secrets... and rest assured, this will have a happy ending! feel free to theorize about things in the comments, or even bug me @patheticnyas on tumblr ;D


End file.
